Learning from 18 years of fostering Teaching and Learning innovation

For more than 18 years, ETH has consistently been fostering Teaching and Learning (T&L) innovation through funding provided by Innovedum*. The funded projects have helped to transform teaching practices sustainably both in individual courses and curricula. But what else have we learned from it?

To find
answers the Innovation management group at LET has reflected on how this
innovation process has evolved. We evaluated 15 years of data and arrived at
two key findings. The first is that community building activities (such as our
lunchtime seminars and the Learning and Teaching Fair) have become the basis
for fostering T&L innovation at ETH. These activities bring together
project leaders, faculty members, educational developers and policymakers and
provide a platform for teaching staff to share information and insights gleaned
from their projects. These events are driven by the concept of Scholarship of
Teaching and Learning (SoTL) which aims for systematic reflections on how
individual teaching interventions and innovation projects improve student
learning. We will continue on this path.

The second
finding is that involving students in the innovation cycle has remained a major
challenge. Innovedum has experimented with different approaches (e.g. Student
Innovedum), but the adoption of students’ ideas within the university has
proven to be difficult. So we have started a new project with the teaching
commission, an advisory body of the Executive Board, looking at ways that
students can be better integrated in the process. First results are expected to
be implemented in the Innovedum project cycle in Spring 2020.